The best poker solver for you depends on one question almost nobody asks before buying: do you want to run your own simulations, or do you want answers that already exist? Get that wrong and you either pay pro-tool money for software you never figure out, or you subscribe to a platform that cannot solve the spots you actually play.
This roundup covers nine tools across both camps: the desktop solvers (PioSolver, GTO+, MonkerSolver, TexasSolver) and the cloud and presolved platforms (GTO Wizard, GTO Gecko, Deepsolver, Lucid GTO, Octopi Poker). One of the nine is ours. We flag it clearly, and we name what competitors do better, because a comparison you cannot trust is worthless. All pricing was checked against vendor sites and 2026 sources in June 2026.
If you are new to GTO poker in general, read that primer first. Everything below assumes you know why equilibrium strategies matter.
Desktop Solver or Presolved Platform: Which One Do You Need?
A desktop solver (PioSolver, GTO+, MonkerSolver, TexasSolver) is software you buy once and run on your own computer to solve any spot you define. A presolved platform (GTO Wizard, GTO Gecko, Lucid GTO) gives you instant access to millions of already-computed solutions plus training tools. Most players below high stakes want the second kind.
Here is the part that surprises people: a desktop solver contains zero answers when you install it. It is an engine, not an encyclopedia. You define the preflop ranges, the bet sizes, the raise sizes, and the full game tree, then the software grinds toward equilibrium for minutes or hours depending on your hardware. Want to know how the button plays K♠7♦2♣ after a 3-bet? You build that spot yourself, every time, and you need to build it correctly or the output is garbage.
Presolved platforms did that work in advance. The vendor ran the sims on server farms, and you browse the results instantly, usually with a trainer attached so you can drill the spots instead of just staring at them. The trade-off is flexibility: if your game uses a stack depth or sizing scheme the library does not cover, you are stuck with the nearest approximation.
The lines are blurring, which helps buyers. Deepsolver solves custom spots in the cloud on demand, so you get desktop-style flexibility without the hardware. GTO Gecko ships an on-device solver inside a presolved platform, so you can browse the library and still solve a weird spot when one comes up. Our guide on how to use a poker solver walks through the actual study workflow for both approaches.
Quick self-test. You need a desktop solver if you nodelock opponent mistakes for exploit research, study non-standard stakes or lines, or build coaching material. You want a presolved platform if your goal is simply to play closer to GTO and find your leaks faster. That second group is most of the market, including most winning regs.
Poker Solver Comparison Table (2026)
Nine tools, two categories, prices as of June 2026. Desktop prices are one-time; platform prices are subscriptions, and every platform listed discounts meaningfully for annual billing.
| Solver | Type | Price (June 2026) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| PioSolver | Desktop | €450–€800 one-time | Pros running custom NLHE sims |
| GTO+ | Desktop | $75 one-time | Budget desktop solving |
| MonkerSolver | Desktop | €499 one-time | PLO and multiway research |
| TexasSolver | Desktop | Free, open source | Custom solving at zero cost |
| GTO Wizard | Cloud / presolved | $49–$279/mo | Deepest library, biggest toolset |
| GTO Gecko | Cloud / presolved | $24.99–$39.99/mo | Value, mobile, 3-way solutions |
| Deepsolver | Cloud solver | $49–$69/mo | On-demand custom solves |
| Lucid GTO | Cloud / presolved | Free tier; Pro $49/mo | Trainer-first study |
| Octopi Poker | Cloud / presolved | Free tier; $200–$600/yr | MTT study with coaching |
The Best Desktop Poker Solvers in 2026
Four desktop solvers are worth buying in 2026: PioSolver remains the professional standard, GTO+ is the budget pick at $75, MonkerSolver owns PLO, and TexasSolver delivers genuine solver power for free. All four run locally on your hardware, and all four assume you are comfortable building game trees yourself.
PioSolver: the pro standard
PioSolver has been the reference NLHE solver since 2015, and nothing about that changed this year. As of June 2026 it costs €450 one-time for the Pro edition and €800 for Edge, which adds preflop solving and wants at least 64GB of RAM. Both come with a year of software updates and licenses for two computers.
What you get for that money is depth nobody else matches on desktop: scripting for batch jobs, aggregation reports across hundreds of flops, nodelocking for exploit work, and a decade of training content built around its interface. Most serious coaching material still assumes you can read a Pio output.
The honest downsides: it is Windows desktop software with no mobile version, there is no presolved library, and the learning curve is real. Buying Pio without a study plan is the most common wasted purchase in poker software. If the price or the platform is the blocker, we wrote up the best PioSolver alternatives separately.
GTO+: the budget desktop pick
GTO+ costs $75 one-time as of June 2026, which is absurd value for a real postflop solver. It comes from the developer behind CardRunners EV, runs lighter on hardware than Pio, and even lets you play hands against your solved strategies, a feature Pio users pay much more for.
You give up Pio's scripting muscle, its aggregation tooling, and its ecosystem. For a player who wants to check a handful of spots per week rather than run industrial research, none of that matters. If a desktop solver is your route and €450 stings, start here. Windows only, like Pio.
MonkerSolver: the PLO standard
MonkerSolver costs €499 one-time as of June 2026 and remains the tool for Pot-Limit Omaha and multiway equilibrium research. If you are serious about PLO theory, there is no substitute: it solves four-card preflop and postflop spots, including multiway trees that other desktop solvers simply refuse.
The cost of that power is steep in every sense. Full PLO preflop sims want server-grade RAM, the Java interface feels dated, and the learning curve makes Pio look gentle. Monker is a research instrument for professionals and obsessives. Casual PLO players should look at presolved PLO options instead, covered in the PLO pick below.
TexasSolver: free and open source
TexasSolver is a free, open-source NLHE solver hosted on GitHub, and it is legitimately good. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, offers both a GUI and a console version, and benchmarks competitively with commercial solvers on many spots. A GPU version from the same developer pushes speeds further.
The catch is everything around the engine. You build every tree yourself, the interface is rougher than the paid tools, and there is no library, no trainer, and no support desk. As a way to learn what solvers actually do before spending money, though, it has no equal. Full transparency: GTO Gecko's own on-device solving builds on this open-source lineage, which is part of why we can vouch for the engine quality.
The Best Cloud and Presolved GTO Platforms in 2026
Five platforms stand out in 2026: GTO Wizard has the largest library and the highest price, GTO Gecko offers the strongest price-to-depth ratio with full mobile apps, Deepsolver solves custom spots in the cloud, Lucid GTO is a polished trainer with a usable free tier, and Octopi Poker wraps MTT study in live coaching.
GTO Wizard: the market leader
GTO Wizard earns its position. The solution library is the deepest in the market, the AI solver handles custom spots in seconds, nodelocking arrived for cloud users, Table Wizard overlays study data onto your sessions, and the format coverage spans cash, MTT, spins, HU SNG, and PLO, including 3-way postflop spots at the top tier. The content engine behind it, with one to two strategy posts a week and pros like Espen Jorstad attached, is the best in the business.
The problem is what it costs now. After the March 2026 restructuring, new-subscriber pricing runs Starter $49, Premium $99, Elite $169, and Ultra $279 per month as of June 2026, with the Premium and Elite tiers up $10 to $20 a month from before. Forum reaction to the increases was loud and mostly unhappy, and the features serious players want most, like full nodelocking and custom 3-way work, sit in the expensive tiers. We broke the tiers down in detail in our GTO Wizard pricing analysis.
If money is not a constraint and you want the most complete single platform, buy Wizard and stop reading. If $99 to $169 a month makes you wince, you have options, and we compared them honestly in our roundup of GTO Wizard alternatives.
GTO Gecko: the value pick (disclosure: this is us)
Full disclosure: GTO Gecko is our product, so read this section with that in mind. We will keep it factual.
GTO Gecko is a presolved library plus trainer platform that runs on the web at play.gtogecko.com and as native apps on iOS, Android, and macOS, with one subscription synced across all of them. The library covers preflop ranges and postflop solutions for Cash (including straddle and ante tables), MTT, and Spin & Go, with true 3-way multiway postflop solutions, something very few platforms compute rather than approximate. A built-in on-device solver handles custom spots the library does not cover.
The training side is where we spend most of our development time: three trainers (preflop, postflop, and full-hand) with an ELO rating and adaptive drilling that re-serves spots you misplay, plus machine-learning explainability that translates the solver's reasoning into plain English using SHAP factors. The statistics suite tracks per-street accuracy, a position matrix, pot-type leaks, and hand review with replay, and lets you compare against the player pool. ICM-aware MTT ranges with an ICM range compare tool are available in the Elite tiers; if you play final tables, our ICM strategy guide shows why chip-EV ranges stop working there.
Pricing as of June 2026: a single format (Cash, MTT, or Spin & Go) costs $24.99/month or $149.99/year, which works out to about $12.50/month. All-access across all three formats is $39.99/month or $239.99/year, roughly $20/month. There is also a permanent free tier with no credit card required: free preflop range browsing, daily free trainer hands, and free web tools like the poker odds calculator. You can browse the free preflop library on GTO Gecko right now and judge the solution quality yourself. Current standing: 4.8 stars across 595+ app-store ratings, 22,500+ players in 175 territories.
What Wizard does better than us, stated plainly: a broader library across niche formats, cloud nodelocking, and a bigger content team. If those are your priorities, it is worth its price. For the head-to-head, see GTO Gecko vs GTO Wizard.
Deepsolver: cloud solving on demand
Deepsolver occupies the middle ground: it is a real solver, but it runs in the cloud, so you define a spot in your browser and get an equilibrium in seconds without owning a workstation. As of June 2026 the Essential plan costs $49/month with unlimited calculations, Pro runs $69/month with early feature access, and annual billing drops Essential to about $29.40/month. A GTO trainer is included.
It suits players who genuinely need custom solves, non-standard stack depths, unusual sizings, but do not want to buy and learn desktop software. The weaknesses are focus and economics: it is NLHE-centric with a smaller ecosystem than the big libraries, and after two years of subscribing you will have spent more than a GTO+ license costs once.
Lucid GTO: the accessible trainer
Lucid GTO, backed by Doug Polk, is the most frictionless entry point in this roundup. There is a workable free tier, the Pro plan costs $49/month or $490/year as of June 2026, and the product runs on essentially everything: Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and the web. The drilling experience is genuinely well designed, and Polk's preparation for his Negreanu heads-up match using an early version is a credible origin story.
The limits show up when you push deeper. There is no PLO, ICM tooling is explicitly not a priority for the team, and players who want aggregation-level study depth will outgrow it. As a first paid GTO tool for a cash-game player, it is a strong choice.
Octopi Poker: study group plus solver
Octopi Poker, founded by high-stakes pro Andrew Lichtenberger, sells a different product: the solver tooling, a visual game-tree explorer, and a Vault of real hands from major events including the WSOP come bundled with weekly live coaching and an active study community. As of June 2026, the Community tier is free, the Personal plan runs $200/year, and Professional, which carries the coaching, is $600/year, with frequent promotional discounts.
It is MTT-centric, which is either its biggest strength or its disqualifier depending on what you play. Cash-game depth is thin compared to everything else on this list. For a tournament player who studies better with structure and other humans, the Professional tier competes with coaching that costs far more per hour.
Which Poker Solver Should You Choose? Picks by Use Case
Match the tool to the job: GTO Gecko for overall value, PioSolver for pros who run custom sims, TexasSolver for free desktop solving, GTO Gecko for mobile, and MonkerSolver for PLO research. Below is the reasoning, including the honest runner-up in each category.
Best overall value: GTO Gecko
Yes, picking our own product here invites skepticism, so here is the math instead of adjectives. All-access on annual billing is about $20/month for presolved cash, MTT, and spins libraries, 3-way postflop solutions, three trainers, and a custom solver. The closest feature-comparable tiers elsewhere cost $99 to $169 per month as of June 2026. If you find a gap in our library that Wizard covers, the price difference buys a lot of patience. Honest runner-up: GTO+ at $75 one-time, if you prefer desktop and do not need a trainer or library at all.
Best for pros who run custom sims: PioSolver
No real contest. Scripting, aggregation reports, nodelocking, and ten years of community knowledge make Pio the default research tool for NLHE professionals. The €450 to €800 one-time cost is small against a pro's edge. Runner-up: GTO+ for the same fundamental capability at a fraction of the price, minus the industrial tooling.
Best free poker solver: TexasSolver
TexasSolver is the only genuinely free full solver on this list, and it holds its own against paid engines. Pair it with the free tiers of the platforms, GTO Gecko's free preflop library and daily trainer hands, Lucid's free tier, for a zero-cost study stack that would have been unthinkable five years ago. We catalogued the whole budget route in our guide to free GTO resources, and our preflop charts guide covers the ranges you can study without spending anything.
Best mobile solver: GTO Gecko
Most solver study still happens at a desk, which is exactly why mobile matters: the player who drills 20 hands on the train every day out-studies the one waiting for desk time. GTO Gecko ships native iOS and Android apps plus a native macOS app, all on one synced subscription, with the full trainer and library rather than a cut-down companion. Runner-up: Lucid GTO, whose mobile apps are also genuinely full-featured. The wider field is covered in our roundup of the best poker solver apps.
Best for PLO: MonkerSolver
For deep PLO research, MonkerSolver at €499 one-time is still the answer, hardware demands and all. GTO Wizard offers the strongest cloud PLO library if you would rather browse than solve. On mobile, our sister app PLO Edge offers a PLO preflop solver, preflop trainer, and postflop trainer at a flat monthly price; note that it does not include a postflop solver, so Monker keeps that crown. Our PLO Edge guide covers what it does and does not do.
Best Poker Solver FAQ
What is the best poker solver in 2026?
There is no single best, only a best per job. PioSolver remains the standard for professionals running custom NLHE simulations. GTO Wizard has the deepest presolved library if budget is no concern. GTO Gecko delivers the best price-to-depth ratio at $24.99 to $39.99 per month. TexasSolver is the best free option.
Are there any completely free poker solvers?
Yes. TexasSolver is a free, open-source desktop solver for Windows, macOS, and Linux that benchmarks competitively with paid engines. Beyond that, several platforms offer permanent free tiers: GTO Gecko includes free preflop range browsing and daily trainer hands with no credit card, and Lucid GTO and GTO Wizard both have free entry tiers.
Is PioSolver still worth buying in 2026?
For professionals and serious students who run their own simulations, yes. The €450 one-time price compares well against $99+ monthly subscriptions if you use it for years. For everyone else, honestly, no: most players get more practical improvement per hour from a presolved library with a trainer than from raw solver output they must configure themselves.
Can I run a poker solver on my phone?
True desktop solvers like PioSolver and MonkerSolver have no mobile versions. What you can run on a phone is a presolved platform: GTO Gecko offers native iOS and Android apps with its full library, trainers, and an on-device solver for custom spots, and Lucid GTO also ships capable mobile apps. For most study tasks, that covers it.
Which poker solver is best for PLO?
MonkerSolver is the research standard: it is the only widely used desktop solver built for four-card, multiway equilibrium work, at €499 one-time. GTO Wizard carries presolved PLO in the cloud. On mobile, PLO Edge offers a PLO preflop solver plus preflop and postflop trainers, though no postflop solver.
Is it legal to use a poker solver?
Studying with a solver away from the table is legal and universally accepted; it is how the modern game is learned. Using any solver or solver output during live play is real-time assistance (RTA), which every major poker site bans and actively detects. The tools in this roundup are study tools. Keep them closed while you play.
The Bottom Line
The solver market in 2026 splits cleanly. If you run custom research, buy once: PioSolver for NLHE, MonkerSolver for PLO, GTO+ or TexasSolver if the budget is tight. If you want to play better GTO poker without becoming a sim operator, subscribe to a presolved platform and spend your hours drilling instead of configuring.
Within the platforms, the real decision is price versus library breadth. GTO Wizard is the most complete and charges accordingly. We built GTO Gecko to deliver the parts that actually move your win rate, accurate solutions, adaptive training, and plain-English explanations, at a price a $1/$2 player can justify. Try the free preflop library and daily trainer hands on GTO Gecko, compare the output against anything else on this page, and decide with your own eyes.
All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners and are used for identification only. GTO Gecko is not affiliated with or endorsed by the companies mentioned. Pricing verified June 2026 — check each vendor's site for current rates.